Epidemiology of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2 in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand: Systematic Review, Meta-Analyses, and Meta-Regressions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: This study characterized the epidemiology of herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infection in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. METHODS: Cochrane and PRISMA guidelines were followed to systematically review, synthesize, and report HSV-2-related data up to January 21, 2021. Meta-analyses and meta-regressions were performed. RESULTS: In Canada, pooled mean seroprevalence was 10.0% (95% confidence interval [CI], 7.8-12.4%) among general populations, 44.5% (95% CI, 20.0-70.5%) among sexually transmitted infection clinic attendees and symptomatic populations, and 60.7% (95% CI, 49.8-71.1%) among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive individuals and individuals in HIV-discordant couples. In Australia and New Zealand, combined, pooled mean seroprevalence was 15.4% (95% CI, 9.6-22.2%) among general populations, 27.8% (95% CI, 12.0-47.2%) among men who have sex with men, and 37.2% (95% CI, 23.7-51.8%) among sexually transmitted infection clinic attendees and symptomatic populations. Men had 0.64-fold (95% CI, 0.47-0.86) lower seroprevalence compared with women. No evidence was found for a decline in seroprevalence over time. Pooled mean proportion of HSV-2 isolation in laboratory-confirmed genital herpes was 62.1% (95% CI, 53.8-70.1%) in Canada and 71.9% (95% CI, 64.2-78.9%) in Australia and New Zealand. Proportion of HSV-2 isolation in genital herpes declined by 0.98-fold (95% CI, 0.97-0.99) per year. Pooled mean proportion of HSV-2 isolation in genital ulcer disease was 17.4% (95% CI, 4.0-37.1%) in these countries. CONCLUSIONS: Over 10% of adults in these countries are infected, with no evidence for declining seroprevalence, unlike other global regions. Over 60% of genital herpes cases are caused by HSV-2 in these countries, yet HSV-2's role is declining by 2% per year.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.011 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".